Tic Tacs and Starbucks
by Little Miss Insufferable
Summary: It's late Wednesday afternoon and Clara's sofa-ridden with a nasty cold. A blanket, a chicken cup-a-soup and a marathon of rubbish TV shows make up her arsenal to fight off the virus, but what happens when the two men in her life show up with the intention of nursing her back to health? Written for a prompt on tumblr. Whouffaldi with some Danny thrown in.


"I'm fine, honestly." Clara's shoulder supported the phone pressed to her ear as her hands occupied themselves with the TV remote and a chicken cup-a-soup. She held back a cough to avoid giving the man at the other end any more of a reason to worry.

"Well you don't sound fine." Danny argued, striding down the corridor towards the front entrance to Coal Hill School with a pile of marking tucked under one arm. "Hannah told me you fainted halfway through first period."

Damn Hannah. She'd specifically told her not to tell Danny about the fainting. "It was nothing, honestly. Barely even a faint. More of a very brief… nap." He made an unconvinced sound on the other end of the phone. "Look, I probably shouldn't have gone in this morning, but I'm home now so there's nothing to worry about."

"I'm still coming over." He insisted adamantly. Clara could hear the sound of his keys rattling as he fished them out of his pocket to unlock his car. "If you're sick, you need someone to take care of you."

Clara smiled at that. For a man without a TARDIS or a sonic screwdriver, Danny certainly made up for his lack of ability to time travel with his sweetness. On more than one occasion she had wondered whether he was too sweet for someone like her. She made a show of thinking over his offer as she chewed on her bottom lip. "Guess I'll see you in a minute then." It wouldn't hurt to have someone to make a fuss of her whilst she was feeling rough. If nothing else, at least she'd be spared the company of Jeremy Kyle all morning.

"Guess you will." She could hear the smile in his voice before he hung up to drive over.

The unmistakable sound of the TARDIS materialising reached her ears less than a minute later. Clara

had forgotten it was a Wednesday. Now she was faced with the rather unappealing prospect of trying to explain to the Doctor why exactly she couldn't travel with him that day.

A part of her briefly wondered whether ignoring him would cause him to fly away and come back next Wednesday. That same part of her realised exactly how stupid the notion was when the sound of her front door opening came from downstairs. As ever, the Doctor didn't bother to knock. One of these days she was going to confiscate his sonic screwdriver… or change her door to one made of wood – she hadn't decided which would be a better plan yet.

"Clara? Clara are you alive up there?" The Doctor's voice carried up from the bottom of the stairs and again she mentally reminded herself that ignoring him would work to no avail.

She decided to settle with sarcasm instead. "No, sorry!" She called back slightly croakily.

Silence for a moment, and then: "Oh, that's a shame. I was going to take you to Arkon three for a walk along the crystal pyramids, but it'll be slow going if you're dead." Of course he had to be sarcastic as well. Clara rolled her eyes and pulled the blanket around her body up to her chin. Let him come to her. Whilst she couldn't deny the thought of crystal pyramids was a tempting one, there was no way in hell she felt like facing the inevitable race for her life in the state she was in.

"What happened to your face?" The Doctor's voice came from the doorway now, and Clara craned her neck to glare at him. His expression seemed genuinely puzzled. Sometimes she wasn't sure whether he honestly didn't comprehend the fact that he was being insulting, or whether he simply revelled in pretending not to. "Did you forget to put on some of that make-up stuff this morning?" He continued with a wave of his hand towards her face.

Intentionally insulting or not, one of these days she was going to smack him. "I'm wearing make-up!" She defended herself indignantly.

"Oh- well perhaps you ought to try putting some more on. You look awfully pale." Whilst insulting her, he'd gotten distracted by rummaging through her bookcase. For a man who only popped into her house once a week to whisk her off in his TARDIS, he certainly knew how to make himself at home.

"I'm _sick._"

He glanced back in her direction at that. Then he was reaching into his pocket and pulling out his sonic screwdriver. He pointed the end at her like she was a door to be unlocked and proceeded to frown down at the device. "Oh yes, you're a right mess of antibodies."

As if on cue, she sneezed loudly. The Doctor frowned down at her. "The crystal pyramids can wait." Clara was surprised at that. She'd thought he'd insist she pulled herself together and came with him anyway. That, or she'd somewhat hoped he might have some cure for the common cold tucked away somewhere in a room in the TARDIS. "There's got to be something to do around here."

Clara stared at him for a moment, and then swiftly shook her head. "Danny's on his way over. You might as well come back next Wednesday; I'll be better by then." The last thing she needed was another testosterone battle in the middle of her living room. Did Time Lords even have testosterone? She filed the question away as something to ask the Doctor at a later date.

"Danny? Why's he coming over? You're sick." The confusion on his face might have been adorable had she not been concerned that Danny would knock on the door at any minute.

"He's coming to look after me. Not that I really need looking after… This is just to stop him calling me up every five minutes to check I'm not dead." Clara explained with a slight roll of her eyes. She was fond of Danny, she really was, but often she wished he'd take a leaf out of the Doctor's book and realise that she could actually look after herself.

"Look after you? And how does he intend to do that? He's hardly a Doctor." There was a look of amusement on the Doctor's face as he lent back against the bookcase. "If you give me your phone I can put a stop to the phone calls."

"Don't be ridiculous. Just… go see the crystal pyramids without me. Honestly, I don't mind." In truth she hated missing out on seeing the stars with him, but she needed him to go before Danny showed up.

"Clara Oswald, are you trying to get rid of me?"

"Yes, actually." The Doctor looked affronted at that, and she quickly cut him off before he could respond. "Not like that. It's just… I don't want a repeat of the day the two of you met. I can feel a headache coming on and the last thing I need to listen to is the two of you get into a 'my horse is bigger than your horse' debate."

"I don't have a-,"

"It's a figure of speech!" Clara interrupted exasperatedly. Suddenly she wished that neither of the men in her life knew her home address. "You'd only get bored hanging around here anyway. I didn't think you did domestic." They'd watched 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' on board the TARDIS one night after Clara had nearly been killed by a Schadoon in an underground maze, but the Doctor had talked so much through it that she'd spent the entire time resisting the urge to clobber him with a cushion. That was about as domestic as any of their adventures had ever gotten. Well… apart from the time he'd tried to cook her dinner when they'd wound up trapped in the TARDIS and she'd complained of being hungry. Clara still didn't think her taste buds had quite recovered from that escapade.

"I could do domestic if I wanted to. I once spent four whole days in a living room."

"What were you doing in a living room for four days?"

"Observing cubes- it's a long story." She watched as he fiddled with a small figurine on one of her bookshelves. It was definitely time he went. If she could just-

The sound of the doorbell caused them both to look towards the doorway in unison. Drat. Danny. Clara forced herself up from the comfort of her sofa and padded groggily towards the stairs. "Get in your TARDIS, pull a few levers and come back next Wednesday." She ordered quietly once she was stood beside him at the bookcase. A part of her deluded itself into thinking that he might actually do as he was told for a change.

She didn't wait around for the Doctor to leave. If he had any sense, he'd be gone when she came back upstairs with Danny. And if not… well, she'd cross that rickety wooden bridge when she came to it.

Danny was holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a tin of chicken noodle soup in the other when she finally answered the door. Clara couldn't help but smile at his thoughtfulness.

"Thought you could do with-,"

"Hello, how may Clara and I help you?" The Doctor's voice cut Danny off from directly behind her. Mentally she made a note to hit him with something blunt and heavy later on.

Danny shifted his gaze between her and the Doctor, his expression a mixture of confusion and surprise. "Er…" He cleared his throat and seemed to gather his wits again. "I'm here to look after Clara. She invited me over."

"What a coincidence. I'm here to look after Clara too. She won't be needing two of us, and with my vastly superior knowledge of the human body you might as well go home." Hitting was definitely on the cards.

"Wait- what?" Danny blurted in confusion, before shooting Clara a confused stare. "Clara, what's going on?"

"Nothing- nothing at all. The Doctor was actually just leaving." She forced a smile and craned her neck up to look at the man in question. "You've got to visit some crystal pyramid things, haven't you Doctor?" Her voice had taken on a tone somewhere between hopeful and pleading.

"Not at all. I'm free as a bird, actually." She was almost convinced he was doing it just to annoy her now. "I'll be upstairs when you're done with PE." And with that he turned on his heel and strolled back upstairs.

Her attention immediately turned back to Danny. "Danny, I'm so sorry. I completely forgot what day it is, and well… he just sort of showed up." She explained hastily. "I have tried to tell him to leave, but apparently he's just as paranoid about my health as you are."

"Right. Well… I guess I'll head home then. No need for me to stay now that you've got him to look after you…" He was already turning to leave when she reached out to restrain him by his arm.

"No, stay." Clara took a brief pause to acknowledge the fact that she would undoubtedly regret her next statement later. "There's room enough for the both of you." Another pause. "_If_ you can be in the same room without arguing like a couple of school children." Even to her own ears it sounded like wishful thinking.

"Clara-,"

"Don't Clara me. Just come inside and shut the door before I catch another cold." It was a statement that didn't invite an argument. On occasion, her control freak persona came in handy. She didn't wait for Danny to come inside before turning and heading back up to the warmth of her apartment. The blanket she'd left draped across the sofa was sorely missed.

"Ah, Clara! I see you got rid of PE. Smart move if I do say so myself. What good is a man who can't take a trip to anywhere in time and space and come back with coffee?"

"I think the coffee from the Starbucks around the corner tastes just fine." Danny interjected from behind her before Clara could get a reply out.

"Well you would think that. You've never tried coffee grown on its home planet."

Clara frowned at that. "You mean coffee's alien?"

"Absolutely. You'd be surprised to learn just how many things on Earth have come over from other planets over the years." The Doctor glanced up at the ceiling in thought. "Apples were the biggest surprise for me."

"You don't seriously buy this, Clara?" Came Danny's remark of disbelief. "Apples aren't alien! He's just making this stuff up as he goes along!"

"Says the man whose knowledge of the universe extends to the Starbucks around the corner." One glance at the Doctor's face told her that he was enjoying this far too much. It was one thing she'd quickly come to note in this new version of the time lord that hadn't really been present in his previous self; he gained a smug sense of satisfaction in one-upping members of the opposite sex - specifically anyone who paid the slightest bit of attention to her. Clara might have been suspicious if she hadn't known better.

"Would you two just cut it out?" Clara finally interjected. "If you're here to take care of me then you're both doing a pretty rubbish job of it. If anything I actually feel worse." She remarked and promptly proceeded to return to her place under her blanket on the sofa.

"Clara, are you okay? Do you need me to get you anything? I could call a doctor if you feel like you need one?" Danny was by her side in a flash, and Clara could practically hear the Doctor rolling his eyes from the position he seemed to have permanently taken up by the bookcase.

"Why would she need you to call her a doctor when she's got one right here?" The Doctor butted in. Clara was tempted to point out his lack of genuine medical training, but quickly decided against it for fear of setting him off again. She hadn't been joking when she'd said she was feeling worse – the pair of them arguing had given her a splitting headache.

"I'm fine, Danny. Honestly. Just got a bit of a headache is all." She reassured him as she ignored the Doctor. "Though if you're really desperate to get me something, a cup of tea and a couple of paracetamol wouldn't go amiss." She added with a slightly cheeky smile in his direction.

No sooner had Danny stood up, did the Doctor blurt out: "I'll get it!"

"What? No, Clara just asked me to get it for her." Danny argued firmly.

"And now I'm getting it for her. Always pays to be one step ahead of the game, soldier boy."

Since when had this become a competition over who could take care of her the best? "Doctor, do you even know how to work the kettle?" Given the state he'd left her microwave in last time he'd tried to use it, it was a fair enough question.

"Of course I know how to work a kettle. Please Clara, give me some credit." And with that, he strolled out of the living room and into the kitchen to presumably attempt to make her a cup of tea. Danny made a move to head out after him, but Clara stopped him with one hand on his forearm.

"Leave him. I've got another job for you." She began with a smile, before promptly tugging him back down onto the sofa beside her. "Keeping me warm." He seemed to relax at that, and she moved to rest her head on his shoulder as his arm came up to wrap around her shoulders. She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to be cuddling up to Danny with the Doctor in the other room, but it served its purpose in distracting the former from starting another argument with the latter.

The living room had fallen into a companionable silence when the Doctor burst back in bearing a cup of tea and a packet of what she hoped was paracetamol. "Ta da." He remarked with a pleased smile, as though he'd just managed to discover the cure for the common cold and brew it for her in tea form. In the Doctor's case, Clara wondered whether that might have actually been easier for him.

Next thing she knew, a Doctor shaped wedge had been driven between her and Danny on the sofa. The gangly time lord had pushed himself between the two of them and left a rather disgruntled looking Danny to forcibly remove his arm from behind the other man's back. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all." The Doctor responded with a sickly sweet smile. He then proceeded to hand over the gifts he'd returned from the kitchen with.

Clara eyed the steaming mug of tea critically for a moment or two. On the outside, it seemed perfectly normal. Perhaps she had been underestimating him a tad when she'd presumed he couldn't make a decent cup of tea. She took a tentative sip of the liquid… and promptly spat it back out again. "Doctor, how much sugar did you put in this?"

"Six cubes. I wasn't sure how many you took, so I went with the usual amount." He answered nonchalantly.

"_Six_ sugar cubes? On what planet is that the usual amount, exactly?" Clara stared at him in disbelief. Sometimes she forgot just how much of an alien the Doctor really was.

"Told you, you should have let me get it for-," The Doctor didn't let Danny get the last of his sentence out.

"Lots of planets, actually." Clara raised an eyebrow at him. "Okay… so I lied. Earth is the only planet where anyone actually drinks tea. Well… aside from the other human-inhabited planets, but in this particular period of time it's just you lot." He explained with a gesture of one of his hands. "Six sugar cubes is how many I take."

"Well it tastes disgusting." She remarked and placed the cup of tea on the coffee table in front of her. Her attention then turned to the packet he was still clasping in his hand. Clara removed his fingers from around the object and studied the label with a roll of her eyes. "And these - these are tic tacs!"

The Doctor glanced down to ascertain her observation. "Oh yes… so they are." He plucked the packet of tic tacs out of her hand and promptly popped one into his mouth. "Oh well. Can't go wrong with a good tic tac."

"You can when you're taking them for a splitting headache." Her tone had taken on one of exasperation as she watched him munch on the mint. It seemed that with every day that passed, she had to try harder and harder not to smack him into his next regeneration.

"I'll get you the paracetamol, Clara." Danny finally interjected. For once, the Doctor didn't argue. She watched as he wandered out into the kitchen, and the aforementioned time lord promptly breathed a sigh of relief.

"Well thank god he's gone. I thought he'd never leave." The hand with the tic tacs in extended towards Clara. "Tic tac?"

"Would you stop it? He's gone to do finish the job you failed to manage." She answered a little more sharply than she'd perhaps intended. "And no, I don't want a tic tac." Later she'd put her lack of patience for him down to sickness. In that moment she wasn't sure whether another a culprit lay underneath the surface. It was true what they said about the ex and the current boyfriend… Not that the Doctor had ever been her boyfriend or anything. He'd made it crystal clear that that wasn't the case.

"Suit yourself." He popped another tic tac in his mouth. "More for me."

Danny appeared made his way back into the living room with a cup of tea in one hand and an actual, genuine packet of paracetamol in the other. Earth men – at least they were good for something. "One cup of tea, and one packet of paracetamol." He announced with a noticeably smug smile. Clara didn't miss the way he gave a deliberate glance in the Doctor's direction to gloat. She also didn't miss the way the Doctor crunched his next tic tac with a lore more force than was really necessary.

"Thanks Danny." She flashed him a grateful smile as she reached up to take the mug of tea from his hand. Danny hovered for a moment, eyeing the Doctor's impossibly close position to Clara's side with a measure of disdain. He seemed to debate something in his head before perching himself on the arm of the sofa at Clara's other side. Suddenly she felt like a slab of meat being fought over by a couple of lions.

There was a strange moment of silence before the Doctor finally spoke. "So what exactly is it that you do in here?"

"What do you meant what do I do? This is my home… I live here." She explained with a slightly furrowed brow in his direction.

"Well that sounds all kinds of exciting." He answered sarcastically. Another moment of silence. "Okay, seriously, how do you do this?" The Doctor gave an exasperated sigh. "Surely you've got to be feeling better by now? It's been what-,"

"Half an hour. If you don't want to stay then go home. No one's keeping you here, and I'm perfectly capable of taking care of Clara by myself. In fact, so far I've done a hell of a lot better job of it than you." Danny snapped impatiently. The Doctor considered him for a moment, one eyebrow raised lazily. Then he rose to his feet slowly.

"Alright, so I might have put too much sugar in her tea and I may have brought her tic tacs instead of pain killers, but the difference between you and I, soldier boy, is that I can give Clara anything she wants in the whole of time and space. She only has to say the word and I can bring her the very sun and stars. I can bring her planets you'd never dream of in your wildest dreams, technology so advanced that you wouldn't even be able to find the on switch, species with brain capacities thousands of times greater than yours will ever be. That blue box you might have passed on your way in will always give me the advantage over you." Clara rather thought he'd gone off course somewhere during his speech. Things were starting to sound more like a competition to decide who got to keep her forever, as opposed to an argument over which one of them was doing a better job of taking care of her that afternoon.

The Doctor was stood in front of Danny now, towering above his seated form. Never one to be intimidated, he rose to his feet to meet the Time Lord head-on. "Then tell me this, Doctor. If your life is so wonderful, why is it that Clara comes back here week after week to live out her real life with me and her job and her everyday responsibilities?" He left the question hanging in the air and then, when there was no answer, continued: "You have to face the facts. Clara enjoys travelling with you, and I'm never going to be able to keep her from flying off across space with you in that phone box thing of yours, but you can't give her the sort of life she has back here with me. A _normal _life." Danny took a step back. "After all, you've only been here half an hour and you're already fed up with us boring old humans."

Clara waited for the Doctor to react – to argue about how no life Danny could give her could ever compare to her life in the TARDIS, or how he was perfectly capable of coping with mundane and domestic if people just gave him a chance. What he did was none of those things. At first, he didn't even speak. Something seemed to switch in his head and his expression turned to one of dejection as he took a step back away from Danny and her and the sofa. "Clara, I'll be back next Wednesday." He wasn't looking at either of them. "Feel better soon."

Then suddenly she was watching his retreating back as he headed for the door. A moment of stunned silence passed before she was up on her feet, casting the blanket she'd had draped over her to one side. "Danny, I'm sorry but I have to go after him." There was no way she could let him just disappear off – not like that. She wanted to wait and say goodbye to Danny – tell him she'd see him tomorrow and not to worry about her, but she was short on time with the Doctor likely to take off in the TARDIS at any given moment.

"Clara!" She heard Danny's voice shout after her as she jogged down the stairs, but didn't spare a moment to look back for him. Her breathing was heavy by the time she made it out the front door, her cold not doing her any favours. With a sigh of relief she observed the TARDIS still parked outside on the grass and swiftly ran towards the doors. When she burst inside, the Doctor was leant against the console, his head bowed as his hands gripped the cold metal underneath them.

"What are you doing here?" He asked the question without looking up at her as he made a show of pushing a few buttons.

"What was that all about?" She asked in turn, taking a few steps towards him.

"What was what all about?" At this rate they were just going to go around in circles all day.

"You storming off like that. One minute you were all 'I'm an all-powerful Time Lord and I can do whatever I want because I'm brilliant and have a snog box masquerading as a time machine.'" She put on a deep voice and a rather pathetic attempt at a Scottish accent to impersonate him. He cracked an ever so slight smile at that. "Then the next minute you'd disappeared on me."

"First of all, if that was supposed to be me then it was a truly terrible impersonation." He began with a wave of one of his hands as he continued to fiddle with the console with the other. "And second of all, it is not a snog box."

She smirked ever so slightly at that. "I think the Time Lord doth protest too much."

Another hint of a smile. His mood seemed to lighten somewhat at the teasing, and then darken again just as quickly. "Go back to Danny, Clara." She watched him flick another switch. Knowing him it was probably the light switch for a room half a mile down the corridor. He often liked to fiddle needlessly with the console when he felt uncomfortable during a conversation. The last time she'd seen him like this, she'd been on the phone to Danny after their trip on the Orient Express. She tried not to let her thoughts stray towards that phone call and the implications it had held.

"I've sent Danny home." It was sort of true. She hadn't exactly told him to go home, but she'd as good as given him the hint. "Didn't want to leave you to sulk in here by yourself." It was an attempt at humour, but it didn't seem well-received.

"I'm not sulking. I'm fine."

"If you have to tell people you're not sulking, it means you probably are."

He turned towards her then. "What would you have me do, Clara?" There was a slight raise in his voice. "Lie on the sofa with you, watching re-runs of some serially boring TV show and eating junk food, whilst discussing car tax and who's on this week's cover of Heat magazine?"

"I never asked you to stay in my living room! You could have gone away and come back next Wednesday without having to deal with any of the rest of my life!" She felt her voice raising to meet his. His ridiculous behaviour certainly warranted being shouted at in her eyes.

"Did it ever occur to you that I might actually enjoy spending time with you? That maybe I'd like to be a part of the whole of your life?" He stepped towards her, but still kept one hand rested on the console. "But as your boyfriend so kindly reminded me, I can't because I'm a 2000 year old time travelling alien, reduced to a hobby on the side because I can't do the whole human lifestyle thing due to the fact that I'm not-,"

She cut him off with her lips pressed against his. Time seemed to stand on its end as he merely froze helplessly in response. Clara didn't expect him to kiss her back. It had been an impulse move that had seemed like a good idea before she'd really given herself chance to consider it, but it was too late for regrets now. She allowed herself another moment to savour the foreign, yet altogether exciting feel of the Doctor's lips under hers before pulling back from him slowly.

If she'd had a camera, she'd have taken a picture of his face in that moment. His eyes sat wide in his head, his lips slightly parted and his cheeks tinged with a very light shade of red. His hands hovered in half-closed fists slightly out to the front, as though they'd been in the process of creeping up to hold her against their owner's will. She mentally reminded herself of her very real boyfriend, who was probably on his way out of her home at that very moment, to keep herself from leaning in for more. She'd berate herself for the initial kiss later.

The Doctor opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water, but she saved him the discomfort of trying to formulate a coherent response. "So, how about those crystal pyramids?" A smile crept onto her lips as she gazed up at his still floundered expression.

"I, er…" The Doctor cleared his throat in an attempt to remove the slight squeak from his voice. "I thought you were sick?"

"I am, but provided you stay out of trouble, I think I can manage a bit of sightseeing." There was a pause in which they both simply stared at each other, and then simultaneously burst into laughter.

Stay out of trouble? Yeah right - trouble came to them.


End file.
